Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Call me a sucker. I want to see this movie. I want to see this movie so bad I'm willing to skip freakin' Christmas to have today be January 18. Sick, innit.

I dislike viral hype campaigns for the most part. Don't fake it, either show me an ad or don't, right?

Doesn't matter. This one's killing me. Either the campaign has been done right to get past my defenses or, more likely, my love of the big monster movies I grew up on has never truly faded away. Whatever the case, the guy who doesn't go to scary movies anymore is going to this one.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Not perfect, certainly. The novel is dense and a lot had to be left out, but it was masterfully done.

I have a thing about adaptations. I'm very forgiving if the net result is that the film evokes the same sort of awe and feeling that the novel did. To me this is what made The Lord of the Rings work so well. The same with Children of Men.

For those who haven't seen it, the film takes place in 2027, eighteen years after the last baby on earth was born. Sometime in 2009, pregnant women miscarried their children, then childbirth ended altogether. The world, of course, has become a cesspool. Britain has become an isolationist state, caging and deporting foreigners as illegals, "Fugees" (short for refugees.)

Clive Owen plays Theo, a 40-something bureaucrat who has pretty well lost all hope. The streets are filled with garbage. There is an oppressive police presence... in all, quite 1984-ish and quite well rendered. It is at once easy to identify with Theo and feel the hopelessness of the world. The terminal generation is here. We're all gonna die and be gone in the next 60 years or so.

Naturally, Theo is snatched from his insipid existence by an ex-lover who happens to lead a pro-foreigner group of subversives planning a future uprising. They need him to use his bureaucratic (and family) connections to secure traveling papers for a young woman in their care.

A pregnant young woman.

This film is filled with shocking and miraculous moments. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, uses long stretches of real time to ratchet up the suspense, inducing breathtaking anxiety for the viewer. This real-time effect makes it even easier to suspend disbelief and be part of this horror of a future.

Some of the sequences are horrifying. The sight of a dilapidated elementary school (no children anymore, remember?) is heartbreaking. Yet in between there are several simply miraculous sequences. The scene where Theo finally realizes exactly who the young woman is and why she's important is simply amazing.

Some of the violence and the scenes of war and uprising are pretty raw, but this is a must see, even for the squeamish.

A note on the DVD extras... much of them are very interesting. However, the one where you have all of these experts almost raging on capitalism and espousing a turn (or return, depending on where you live) to communism is ridiculous, myopic, scare-mongering. Some good points they had to make were lost in their extremist reactions to what they were discussing. Obviously some folks need to spend some time in China, or look into the old USSR. That worked out well.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

I've always heard how polarizing it is. I'm a Python fan but not necessarily a Gilliam fan. I'd say of the films of his I've seen, 12 Monkeys is my favorite -- mostly by default. I've been more bewildered than entertained by his other stuff (the exception being Holy Grail but it was a co-directed effort so I kind of put it in another category). For example, I made my dad take me to see Time Bandits (I was nine) and I remember the whole audience just sitting there dumbfounded at the end, myself included.

So have you seen Brazil and what do you think? Does it grow on you? Do I need to have a certain expectation or preparation in mind when I sit down to watch it or should I just be open to "whatever?"

And if you don't have much to add on Gilliam/Brazil, what directors or writers do you just not get the appeal of?

Monday, November 5, 2007

WTF? Least scary movie ever. Even less scary than The Blair Witch Project, which before 1408 was the least scary movie ever, and almost as boring. My four-year-old child was scarier than 1408 on Halloween. She was dressed as Cinderella.